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have some details, however, of him in his last years, which throw light on his character as it appeared to those who survived him. He was of austere look, says David Buchanan,1 and of homely garb, but brightened readily into wit and pleasantry even in the most serious discussions. He was a Stoick philosopher,' says Sir James Melville, ‘. . . pleasant in conversation, . . . and also religious.' He was wont to despise pompous monuments, observes Archbishop Spottiswood; and Scot of Scotstarvet tells that, being summoned to compear' before the Council for some passages in his History while it was going through the press, he told the macer that he was to compear before ane higher Judge.' Andrew Melvin and his nephew James, with Thomas Buchanan, found him not long before his death in Edinburgh, teaching a young lad in his service the hornbook. I perceive, sir,' Andrew said, 'you are not idle.' 'Better this,' the old man answered, 'than stealing sheep or sitting idle, which is as bad.' The Melvins came to him again after visiting Arbuthnot's printing-office, where they had seen the passage of his History relating to Rizzio's burial, and expressed a fear that the King would prohibit the work entirely. Tell me, man,' Buchanan asked from his bed, if I have told the truth.' 'I think so,' the younger Buchanan replied. Then I will abide his feid and all his kin's,' said the dying scholar. 'And so,' concludes James Melvin, to whom we owe this narration, by the printing of his chronicle was ended, that maist learned, wise, and godly man ended this mortal life.' One of the last stories told of him is, that he asked his servant what money he had, and finding that it would not cover his funeral expenses, ordered it to be given to the poor, leaving the city of Edinburgh to bury him or not as it pleased. All he had in the world was an arrear of a hundred pounds due on the pension he derived from Crossraguel. He died while King James was in the hands of the Gowry conspirators, ten years after Knox, and during the boyhood of Shakespeare,2 on Friday the 28th September 1582, about four months before his seventy-seventh birthday. He had suffered much pain from gout and other disorders at the close of his long, laborious,

1 Of the two portraits of him which hung last year in the National Portrait Exhibition at Kensington, that belonging to the Royal Society struck us as the most characteristic, and we have seen an engraving from it in one of the Continental editions of his History. What has become of the portrait which King James recognised on the walls of the house of Tycho Brahe in Denmark? (See Irving, p. 201.)

2 A passage in the History of Scotland shows that Buchanan had seen the fitness of the story of Macbeth for dramatic purposes; and this suggestion of his may have reached Shakespeare, who was a very well read man (Op. i. 115).

and wandering life; and had looked forward for some time to this harbour (as he calls it in his Autobiography) with weariness, but not without hope. No tougher, more genuine Scotch mountain-ash ever fell before the inevitable blow, or had put forth greener leaves in its time, or left behind it nobler timber.

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George Buchanan was buried in the churchyard of the Greyfriars, and his funeral was attended by a great company of the faithful.' 'His ungrateful country,' we quote Dr. Irving, never afforded his grave the common tribute of a monumental stone.' But his name will outlast the proudest monument in that old burying-ground. His fame rides on the sea of time by two anchors, and can perish only with the memory of the Latin language and the Scottish nation.

1 Memoirs, p. 309. Chalmers (we like to see a reviler of Buchanan blundering so often) quoted an old epigram in contradiction of this fact, which very epigram unluckily proved that it was perfectly true. Irving shows that the want of a monument was a frequent reproach, though the spot of Buchanan's interment was known, and may have had a mark of some kind or other on it. Surely it is not too late to repair this omission of our ancestors, whose disturbed political life affords some excuse for them?

ART. III.-The Political Writings of Richard Cobden. 2 Vols. W. Ridgway: London.

THE time has not yet arrived for writing Cobden's life. The great political struggles in which he engaged are still too fresh in the memory of the present generation to admit of a faithful record of his political career, without including much which affects too closely the characters of public men still on the scene, or but recently removed from it; and of the last great achievement of his life, and his solitary official act, the Commercial Treaty with France, it is impossible yet to speak freely.

But it is on this account only the more important, and espe cially at a time when, upon the conduct and intelligence of the Liberal party in this country, it depends whether the years before us are to bring with them a repetition of the inconsistencies and hesitations which have too often deformed and paralysed our recent course, or are to be a fruitful and brilliant period of rational and consistent progress,-that the policy of which Cobden was the foremost representative should at least be thoroughly understood and widely known.

It is therefore with a peculiar satisfaction that we hail the work before us, and we trust that it may be shortly followed by a republication of his principal speeches, both in and out of Parliament, so far as these can be collected, and if possible, by a selection of his letters on the great practical questions of the day.

In bringing together in a connected form these political essays, written on various subjects, on different occasions, and at wide intervals of time, but unsurpassed in cogency of reasoning, and in their truthful and temperate spirit, Mrs. Cobden has rendered a great service both to her husband's memory and to the rising generation of Englishmen.

Presented originally to the public in the ephemeral form of pamphlets, thrown out in sharp opposition to the prevailing passions and prejudices of the hour, and systematically depreciated as they were by the organs of public opinion which guide the majority of our upper classes, we suspect that they are well-nigh forgotten by the elder, and little known to the younger men among us. Yet do these scattered records of Mr. Cobden's thoughts contain a body of political doctrine, more original, more profound, and more consistent than is to be found in the spoken or written utterances of any other English statesman of our time, and we commend them to the earnest study and consideration of all who aspire to exert any influence on the future government of our country.

Whenever the day shall come for an impartial review of the history of England since the reform of Parliament in 1832, it will, we think, be found that of all those who have played a prominent part in our public affairs during the last thirty years, the two men who, widely unlike in many qualities, both of character and intellect, but with an extraordinary unity of purpose and principles, have left the deepest mark on their generation, and made the most profound impression on the policy of the country, have been Richard Cobden and John Bright.

We know that this belief is very far from being shared generally by the upper classes of their countrymen, the majority of whom still regard these men with open aversion, or concealed suspicion, as the foremost and most powerful advocates of changes in our system of government, designed, as they believe and fear, to affect the security of vested interests which they have been in the habit of identifying with the greatness and welfare of the State.

But it cannot, we think, be denied even now, that in spite of the resistance of class interests, and of the avowed or tacit opposition of the great political parties, our national policy has been steadily gravitating in the direction of these men's views, and that thus far at least every successive step towards the fulfilment of their principles has led us farther onward in the path of national progress and prosperity.

The truth appears to be, that in estimating the character and labours of these two statesmen, it has been too often the practice to forget that they have been the only two great political leaders of our time, perhaps of any time in our Parliamentary history, who have steadily and uniformly throughout their whole career worked for great principles, without any regard to the interests of classes or of parties, or to the popular clamour of the hour, and that thus they have in turn been brought into collision with all classes, and with all parties, and on some memorable occasions even with the great body of the people themselves.

We believe that to this cause is to be traced the false and shallow judgment so commonly passed upon them. It is thus that they have been constantly charged with narrowness, and with hostility to the institutions of their country, too often confounded with its conservative forces, and cherished as such by many who are entitled to our respect, as well as by the ignorant and selfish; but it will be found that the charge is usually brought on the part of some class whose special interests they had denounced and thwarted, or on the part of the nation at large, when the assumed national interest is opposed to the larger interests of humanity. They have been accused of indifference

to the greatness and honour of their country, when, on the contrary, a deeper examination of their views will prove, we think, that they are almost the only leading statesmen of our time who have exhibited a real practical faith in the future of England.

They have suffered the fate of all those who are in advance of the age in which they live, and who aspire to be the pioneers of progress and the apostles of a new political faith; but we believe that when the period of transition and confusion through which we are now struggling shall have passed away, they will occupy a place among the wisest statesmen and truest patriots in our history.

The last is still among us, and is destined, we trust, to add still more to the many splendid services which he has rendered to his country, and to the world. But Mr. Cobden's work is done, and it only remains for those who feel the priceless value of his character and teaching, to point the moral of his life, and to gather up with reverence the maxims of political truth and wisdom which he has left behind him.

Mr. Cobden's political character was the result of a rare and fortunate combination of personal qualities, and of external circumstances.

Sprung from the agricultural class, and bred up (to use his own expression), ' amidst the pastoral charms of southern England,' imbued with so strong an attachment to the pursuits of his forefathers, that, as he says himself in the volumes before us, had we the casting of the rôle of all the actors on this world's stage, we do not think that we should suffer a cottonmill or manufactory to have a place in it;' trained in a large commercial house in London, and subsequently conducting on his own account a printing manufactory in Lancashire, Mr. Cobden possessed the peculiar advantage of a thorough acquaintance and sympathy with the three great forms of industrial life in England. Nor were the experiences of his public career less rich and varied than those of his private life.

The first great political question in which he bore a conspicuous part, the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, and his consequent connexion with the powerful producing class, which, by a fortunate coincidence of interest with that of the people at large, originated and led this great and successful struggle, gave him a thorough insight into this important element of our body politic, in all its strength and in all its weakness; his knowledge of other countries-the result of keen personal observation, and much travel both in Europe and America, his intimate relations with some of their best and most enlightened men, as well as with their leading politicians, together with the moderating and

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